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Planning and Infrastructure Bill

My Lords, I agree with my noble friend Lord Lansley’s approach of being specific about what it is that developers and investors should be looking at instead of what the latest designated strategy might be. This approach also makes sure that we do not end up with more reasons for judicial review, when it is left to judges to determine what is the strategy or where there is nuance and so on. My noble friend made points about making that direct link to understanding a moment in time and that the measure has been through the parliamentary aspect of the process, initiated by the Government of course. That simplicity will in fact help the Government in achieving a lot of the aims which they seek.

3.45 pm

My noble friend Lady Neville-Rolfe is also right that we need to improve the connections. One thing that has been frustrating is that Ofgem, for what it is worth, has overinterpreted existing legislation. The previous regime was National Grid, as it was, now it is NESO. It could have had more flexibility in order to have more certainty on what was to be connected, instead of connections agreed 10 years ago, with very little, as a consequence, happening. That is partly because it leads to a whole bunch of work and fear in local communities on what further infrastructure will be used for the transmissions.

To some extent, this is where the noble Earl, Lord Russell, is trying to go with speeding up the connections, but I am concerned about two aspects of the approach that he is suggesting. I understand what he says about local energy grids, but there are significant parts of the country where the energy being generated is not intended for any use near that particular part of the country, whether it is in parts of Scotland or parts of coastal Britain. It is intended to be transmitted—I am not entirely sure where, and perhaps I need to educate myself further on Liberal Democrat policy and what exactly the local energy grids are—but I would ask on whom the costs fall.

A lot of this drives costs on to consumers. My concern is around what I have seen where energy developers have not got the CfD that they were expecting or hoping for and then have either cancelled projects or reduced the amount of energy that they are prepared to generate. That is a commercial decision, but one reasons for aspects of centralisation is that it is largely not taxpayer subsidised—well, it is taxpayers in a lot of the cases—but there is also an issue around bill payer subsidy in how we get the energy grid that we need in the future.

Where I disagree with the noble Earl, Lord Russell, is that this will always require a huge amount of centralisation in any consideration of how we get the right energy grid right around the world. It is to that end that I hope that the Minister will consider carefully the amendments tabled by my noble friend Lord Lansley, because that simple change of legislation would in fact unlock a lot of certainty and bring clarity, which is to the good of our future electricity capacity.